Hallo SR Fans! Ever wondered where the slow speeds (less than 1/15th) are clockworked? Like most other mechanical movements that are past their ‘sell-by-date’ (in this case nearly 60 years out of guarantee!), the works are often glued up or just plain sticky. The oils and greases after so long turn to sticky goo and don’t do the intended job anymore.

With this particular camera, as with many others, a good clean with lighter fuel is all that is needed to keep things running smoothly for many years to come without any lubrication. Let’s face it, how often do you use shutter speeds of ⅛ or less in general – or the self-timer, for that matter, unless you are needing the slow speeds, of course… For macro work, for example?

Nevertheless, it is annoying when they don’t work on an otherwise usable camera, so here is a quick fix for those who are interested:

The clockwork for the low-speeds are under this cover; hold the mirror up and be careful when undoing the screws, as they are not very ‘deep’ and you are going at them at an angle, because the prism housing and lens-mount are sort of in the way 🙂 The paint scratches easily and you don’t want anything bright or reflective in there!

This is what it looks like under the cover and is where the buzzing comes from:

Upright the camera when rinsing out with lighter-fuel (as in this pic), please and then cock the shutter and release a few times at each speed, until it sounds right. Don’t be be tempted to add oil, it really isn’t necessary. Any traces of old oil will pool where it is needed through capillary action and be left when the fuel evaporates. If it sticks again in ten or twenty years, you now know where to fix it! 🙂

l recently received an SR-2 that behaved strangely: The shutter seemed oddly stuck, but somehow released, but left the mirror up… One shutter blind worked, but the other just stayed put. What was the problem? When I took the front plate off, I found the shutter blind completely wrapped and stuck to itself. Melted, actually! Some over-zealous previous owner had diligently removed the top cover and ‘cleaned’ the works by pouring acetone over it… No problem for the metal parts, but what dropped through onto the roller-blind fused it together for keeps! So, please remember, use a fine artist’s brush to apply fuel/cleaner or a very thin Pipette, so that you can control where it goes 🙂

This is what greeted me inside: